Around this time last year, we posted a long post here on the forums entitled “In Regards to the Server.” Our goal was to identify and explore the answers to 2 very important questions that have guided the direction of Atlas since its inception:

What kind of server are we trying to make?

What kind of community are we trying to cultivate?

Over the years, we’ve gone through many different iterations of major plugins, and had many different communities of players on Atlas. But no matter the differences, we always like to take a step back from the nitty-gritty of running the server day-to-day, and reassess what our true goals are with Atlas - and not only remind ourselves of what we’re working towards building, but also reaffirm and clarify that to our playerbase.

As players, you choose to spend your limited free time playing our server - and for that we are truly grateful. But as we continue to develop and grow the mechanics and gameplay of Atlas, we also want to make sure that the right types of players are the ones who are drawn to this community at large. It doesn’t matter how fun or balanced a game is, if the community at large is over-competitive to the point of toxicity, then it ceases to be a fun, relaxing activity that people actually enjoy (looking at you, League of Legends…)

So to begin what we’ll likely have as an annual tradition, let’s take another look at these 2 questions, and break them down individually:

What kind of server are we trying to make?

Funny enough, the baseline answer to this question has remained much the same since last year. To quote the “In Regards” post from a year ago:

When we set out to create Atlas, we did so with one very clear goal in mind: to make an immersive server that players of any playstyle could enjoy. We’d all played on a variety of servers that did singular elements extremely well (PVP, quests, economy, towns) - but at the cost of making all other elements of that server irrelevant. While the hyper-focus of one element can certainly make for a strong server, it also shoe-horns players into that one playstyle, and ultimately punishes those who don’t conform to it. With the amount of options and customizability that MC provides, it seemed a shame to not create something that allowed players to feel the kind of freedom and discovery that we enjoy as developers, without having to play on a separate server for each playstyle they enjoy.

So the question became: Why had no one ever made a server like this before? And the number 1 answer we heard was: Because it’s impossible. Obviously, this is a response that we flat-out rejected. There are countless examples of MMOs that blend game elements in an immersive way - and that’s exactly what we set out to do. We wanted Atlas to feel like a game world people could get lost in, rather than a giant lobby hub full of portals leading to disconnected sub-servers. And thanks to our unbelievably talented team of developers, we were able to make that a reality.

One question we often get is: What is the “main goal” of Atlas? On a PVP server, the goal is to be the most powerful and feared fighters. On an Adventure server, the goal is to finish all the quests. But when you combine all those elements together, the lines become blurred, and players understandably find themselves faced with the question: What am I working towards? And the simple answer to that is: making the best Nation.

So what constitutes the “best” Nation? That’s the part we leave up to you! Maybe your definition of this is being the Nation with the most researched custom crafting recipes. Maybe it’s having the most money in your coffers, or owning the most land. Maybe it’s having the strongest military and sieging capabilities. Maybe it’s being the premiere exporter of alcohol, or sugarcane, or spruce wood bows. Or maybe it’s simply cultivating a reputation as the best new-player Nation to join. The goals of your Nation are entirely yours to decide!

This ideal has been, and continues to be, the core tenet that drives our development of Atlas. We are a Nations server. We’ve created and blended together a lot of different ways to play, but no matter what you enjoy spending your time doing - fighting, building, trading, farming - the best way to succeed at it is to make or join a Nation. It’s a place to go home after a long day of sieging, or mining, or dungeoneering, to kick back and take a break. It’s a place where players can feel like the things they do tangibly matter - not just until the next time they die, but long-term - and gives them a reason to keep coming back and working towards something. It’s your community within our community.

When we launched Atlas back in March, we wanted to build on this idea with our Leaderboards system: a place where you could work towards being the “top nation” at whatever you do best. We wanted to give a reward to winners on the Leaderboards, but never knew quite what - and before we could fully flesh out those rewards, we were deep into the development of the Relics system. Sieges, as a major system we intended to have ready by launch, underwent some major changes at the 11th hour (the transition from the Exemption Limit system to the Relics system) and thus they were not included in the March release. Because of that, our focus and priority became getting this new system released to the server, so that players could once again take part in the Siege system.

With Relics and Sieges finally released a few weeks ago, we finally had the opportunity (and time) to step back and expand our focus - and one big thing we realized, was that we’d created an “endgame imbalance.” Sieges, as the culmination of PvP combat, warfare, and technology on Atlas, became the only clear long-term endgame goal, and thus the only way for players to feel as if they were “winning.” Because while any type of player could score on their specific Leaderboard and win numerical bragging rights, only the Military playstyle had an additional win condition that provided tangible in-game advantages - Relics. And if PvP and warfare wasn’t what you wanted to end up doing on Atlas - well, then what were you working towards?

That question - what are players working towards? - has been the topic of much discussion over the past few weeks. To help visualize how we see the gameplay tracks of Atlas, we put together a chart:Fancy, huh? You’ll notice that Nations sit in the center, as we’ve said before: our “central pillar of Atlas.” The four different branches that come off of Nations, reflect the four sections of our Leaderboards (i.e. the four major playstyles.) The left side of the graphic could be considered the “PvP” side of Atlas, whereas the right side could be seen as the “PvE” side of Atlas. Granted, these 4 tracks are by no means mutually exclusive. Dungeons, for example, are part of the Military branch - due to the type of gameplay style that excels at it - even though they would technically be considered PvE content. Likewise, the mechanics that fall under the Technology and Industry branches can be useful for all branches. Mixing and matching playstyles across both sides of this chart are exactly what we want to encourage. But separating them out helps identify the different types of players that not only need a fun mechanic to excel at, but something to work towards - endgame goals that feel victorious without completely trumping every other type of “victory” on the server. It also helps direct competition in a healthier way - pitting players with similar playstyles and mentalities against each other, rather than having 1 single “win condition.”

By this point you’re no doubt asking: what the hell are Grand Feasts? And while we can’t reveal too much about them now (we’ll go into them in detail at the next State of the Server,) what we can say is that it will more or less be what we call an “un-Siege.” Instead of an event during which you try to keep players out of your Town, you’d be trying to get the most players into your Town, to compete against one another in more Culture-focused competition, and reward the “victors” with powerful, tangible gameplay benefits. Beyond the competition of the system itself, we expect it to be a great backdrop for Nations to throw their own fun RP events that engage the community at large (Did someone say Knockey Hole tournament...?)

On top of all this, we still want to make Leaderboards the forefront of Atlas competition - and now that we have more development time to do so, we can move onto developing tangible rewards for them, along with creating the Grand Feasts mechanic.

So what does this mean for the rest of your future content? We still have a lot planned (and Mojang keeps stealing our ideas… stupid bees in 1.15…) In all seriousness though, we still have a lot of other plugins and general content we want to release between now and the end of the year. The devs are hard at work on some exciting things across the board, including:

AtlasMenus - Atlas will have most (if not all) of its relevant commands and links in a nice and simple GUI for you to interact with! No more needing to guess what the EXACT syntax of that one very specific command you were looking for was!

New Nauru Build - New Nauru is on its way! Easier to navigate, prettier, and with more content!

SimpleMagic - Tyr’s new and improved system for Magic, including Wandcrafting and Spellcrafting!

Holiday Events - Similar to the Kairosbloom event back in April, expect some unique mechanics, events, and prizes during both October and December!

The Cursed Plugin (Religions) - “Alright, alright, but like for real this time. I’m just trying to get AtlasMenus done, then I promise this will be out before 2020. I PROMISE.” - Tee

Diplomacy - A mechanic that allows Nations to negotiate and tangibly enforce diplomatic deals, peace agreements, war declarations, and alliances!

We’ve talked a lot about Atlas from a development standpoint so far - and hopefully given a clearer view of the types of things to look forward to over the next few months. So let’s move on to the other major question:

What kind of community are we trying to cultivate?

One of our favorite things as developers (besides, you know, developing) is seeing the community that forms and thrives and grows around Atlas. Seeing gamers of all different ages, skills, even nationalities, come together in a shared space and give life to the world we’ve built, is one of the coolest and most rewarding parts of our jobs. For that reason, one of our primary goals in addition to creating and growing the game itself, is growing and cultivating the community, and the environment in which all players on Atlas have to deal with. A game is only as good as the community that plays on it.

To quote last year’s “In Regards” post again:

Our goal is to create a community that can be both friendly and competitive. “Coopertition” (Cooperation + Competition) is a tenet that we hope our community can strive towards, as it’s an attitude that stands to benefit all the different types of players that Atlas attracts. If a player or Nation is so good at fighting that they absolutely steamroll all competition, where’s the fun in that? Consider giving your opponents the tools to actually fight back, so that the fights are actually interesting and fair (and take actual strategy.) We want to create as many ways to succeed on our server as possible, to allow players to compete in a variety of mechanics that extend beyond “who can kill everyone else the best?” We want to create an environment where all players feel like they are empowered to be better, whatever their strengths may be. But if your enjoyment of this game hinges on ruining someone else’s enjoyment of it, then you are not the type of player we want on Atlas.

A misconception we often see, is that Atlas is not a server that caters to competition. That people who “win” get punished for “being mean.” This is never the case - competition is what drives Atlas, whether it’s in a Siege or fighting for the top spot on a Leaderboard. But there is a specific type of attitude that turns friendly competition into personal hope-crushing. An attitude that doesn’t just say “I won” - it creates the mentality of “You can never beat me, you’ll never beat me, so you should just quit.” From a mechanical, gameplay standpoint, we discussed our plans to address this above - by giving alternative tracks to victory outside of Military prowess. But from a community standpoint, the issue is more nuanced. Are those players who have “won” in the eyes of the community - both through constant activity and PVP strength - creating an environment that new players actually want to play on? Are they looking to bring in more players and help attract a thriving community so that they can actually assert their dominance and compete? Or are they simply willing to “win at any cost,” even if that means burning the server to the ground so they can be King of the Ashes? It’s an important distinction - one that we as admins spend a lot of time discussing - and one we take very seriously.

So as we continue forward in developing and growing the server, getting ourselves to a place in which we feel good about going wide with our advertising, we want to reassert the type of server and community that Atlas is, and will always be. Atlas will never be the best PVP server, just as it will never be the best PVE/peaceful server. If you want a server that only caters to either of those things, go play a Factions or MCMMO server - it’s literally what they’re there for. What Atlas will always strive to be, is the best marriage of both worlds. A sandbox MMO in which players can simultaneously progress and grow their stock as players and Nations on the server long-term, while still competing in a brutally dangerous world that rewards those who excel in their field. If you want a server that focuses on war and fighting over everything, or a server that focuses on quests and story so much that you cannot be killed by other players - Atlas is not the server for you. It’s nothing personal - but if you’re here to try and fit a square peg into a round hole, then don’t waste your time (or ours.)

If you’ve stuck through and read the entire post to this point, we really appreciate it. This has been a long explanation, no doubt - but one we feel is vitally important to keep our players abreast of. We stated this last year, but it merits restating: your choosing to play on our server truly means the world to us. We hope we can pay you all back by continuing to make Atlas a place you want to keep coming back to.

About Us

Atlas is an immersive MC experience like no other. A custom nation creation system, mixed with the rich backstory and quest progression of an MMORPG, make for a world that MC players of any style can enjoy!